Yesterday I wrote about extremes – rigidity and/or laxity in regard to observance of law. This morning I read a passage from a Samurai warrior in 14th century Japan quoted in the book, Perseverance, by Meg Wheatley that seemed a good example of the rigid end of the spectrum of self-discipline. As I began to reflect on its meaning, however, I could see from a somewhat different perspective the kenotic way of life that Jesus came to teach us, the “letting go” that practitioners of centering prayer hope to achieve. If it seems extreme, take another look; see if there is not value in deep reflection on the meaning.

I have no parents: I make the heavens and earth my parents. I have no home: I make awareness my home. I have no divine power: I make honesty my divine power. I have no means: I make understanding my means. I have no magic secrets: I make character my magic secret. I have no miracles: I make right action my miracles. I have no friends: I make my mind my friend. I have no enemy: I make carelessness my enemy. I have no armor: I make benevolence and righteousness my armor. (Wheatley, p. 134)

When I was a child, one of the laws of the Catholic Church was: “No unnecessary servile work on Sunday.” That meant that the laundry, ironing and cleaning house had to be done on Saturday in order that we might turn our minds to thoughts of God and church attendance on Sunday. We never forgot the adjective unnecessary, however, because it was clear that sometimes emergencies arose and something needful superseded the law. When I entered the convent, silence was the highest law of the night. We didn’t talk much anyway, but at 9:00 PM strict silence began and at 10:00 it became “Grand Silence.” The only cause for breaking the silence after that was a dire need of someone for help – serious illness or accident in the night. Even then, as novices, it took courage to break the silence, so well was “the law” drilled into us and so fervently did we wish to be obedient to God.

This morning’s gospel tells of Jesus having dinner at the house of a leading Pharisee (often a “teachable moment” for the others in attendance). It couldn’t have been a comfortable meal for him because, as Luke says (LK 14:1-6), “the people there were observing him carefully.” It was the Sabbath and the Mosaic Law was clear about Sabbath practice. There was a man there who suffered from “dropsy” (edema, probably from heart disease) and Jesus, knowing the crowd was just waiting for a chance to catch him breaking the law, gave them an opportunity to accuse him before he did anything. He asked them (in some translations the lawyersamong them), “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not?” When no one spoke up he healed the man and dismissed him. Knowing that the story of his actions would probably reach the whole town by morning, he asked them a further question. “Who among you,” he said, “if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” The gospel says that “they were unable to answer his question.”

There are lots of applications of this gospel. The point is, of course, that the law of God, which in its most basic form is all about love, is the highest law and everything else is subordinate to that. Extreme behavior in either direction of total disregard or rigid following does not work for those who live in “God’s house.” We see in our country today both extremes when it comes to Sabbath practice. The question for me today is about how I remember God – not only one day a week, to be sure. It is good, however, to set aside one day of the week (not necessarily the traditional Sabbath, especially if we work for our livelihood on that day) or to create another way to focus our attention on God and the things of God, to reflect on our relationship and give thanks for the blessings and the challenges of our lives that bring God clearly into focus for us. How do you spend your Sabbath? How do I?

As the Letter to the Romans has unfolded in the past several days in the morning readings I have been waiting for two sections to appear. This morning I am encouraged by the first of my two favorite passages. Paul’s voice is clear and strong this morning and I can say nothing that improves on his message. Listen to his impassioned testament of faith.

Brothers and sisters: if God is for us, who can be against us?…Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us…What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?…No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (ROM 8:31-39)

It must’ve been an amazing experience to hear the impassioned messages of St. Paul. This morning I can only imagine the gathering in Ephesus catching fire when he proclaims to them that they are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God! (EPH 2:19-22) When he adds the claim that – in Christ Jesus – they are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, I wonder how many in the crowd were convinced right away, which ones had to ponder and discuss the message and who turned away finding it all too difficult to believe. Once again I am thrown back to images of the crowds lining the streets in our country (or anywhere) to get a glimpse of Pope Francis. There is something palpable about the energy of an event like that and about the outpouring of love that accompanies the one bringing the message.

What does it mean to us today to be “members of the household of God?” Clearly we are called to a greater consciousness, as Richard Rohr says, that “everything belongs” and that we have responsibility in the global community. The psalmist reminds us today of the reach of that responsibility when proclaiming in Psalm 19 that “the heavens proclaim the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork…” Just as we are to hear the words of our brothers and sisters in need (perhaps especially the hordes of refugees in Eastern Europe at this moment), we need to be attentive to the groanings of Earth, working to correct our misuse of her resources. And we can’t depend on daily reminders of our place in this household. It’s time for us to act as mature members, listening to the inner promptings of love and recognition, caring for this dwelling place of God that has been given to us as gift.

In conversations lately about spirituality or Church, I have often heard – and occasionally said myself, “It feels like something is happening…” That’s a rather bland statement that is generally followed, however, by examples of an energy that cannot be easily explained but is felt as a growing thing – where people are gathering to discuss the newly recognized convergences of science and spirituality or a discovery of something Thomas Merton said 50 years ago that now makes sense or an exploration of the Gospel of Thomas…It is the same hopeful sense that St. Augustine had almost 2,000 years ago, that God iscloser to us than we are to ourselves. Wanting to participate in that nearness of God is likely what drew millions of people to the streets to see Pope Francis pass by in Washington, DC and New York City and Philadelphia. It touched people in the Congress, the United Nations Assembly and the families chosen to represent us in Philadelphia. It brought tears to the eyes of people watching those events on television as surely as if the Pope were in their living rooms. Clearly we want more of God in our lives and in our world.

This is the same arising that I think Paul knew when he said to the Romans and to us this morning, “I consider the sufferings of the present time are as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed for us. For creation waits with eager expectation for the revelation of the children of God.” (ROM 8:18-25) I am disappointed in that text which used to say that “all of creation stands on tiptoe to see the children of God coming into their own.” Jesus knew it could happen – this bursting forth of the Kingdom of God in the world – when he compared it to a mustard seed or yeast, small and imperceptible at first but in the end the largest of all the trees or the impetus for the dough to rise to full capacity. (LK 13:18-21) Where are we now? How close to the revelation of God in our time? What are we doing to “bring it on?” Have we forgotten how to be so eager as to stand on tiptoe to see it revealed?

This morning I look out at our beautiful maple tree framed by my bedroom window and see that she is totally stripped of all her leaves, a sure sign of movement toward winter. The color that caught the sun for such a short span was magnificent and I am sad that it is gone so quickly, yet the remainder – the starkness of naked branches – has its own beauty. The tree, so tall and straight, offers me a vivid image of praise – every branch reaching upward, high into the sky toward God. No downward turn anywhere meets my eye as I scan upward from the ground. Even the smallest branches all lift and witness to the willingness of the whole tree to give itself over to praise in what seems a death but is only change.

I found a reflection from Meg Wheatley’s book Perseverance this morning that reminded me of the adage, “Change is the only constant.” She speaks of the Chinese yin/yang symbol as “the dance of opposition that creates wholeness, the dance that never ends.” Here is more of what she says, ending with a question that I think will keep me going when I am tired and wondering when a new spring will come or when I will experience the beauty of what will seem an endless winter:

One state gives birth to another. Whichever state is here at this moment, we can be sure that what’s coming next will be its opposite…At first, the new birth is just a sliver, a new moon glimmer of the future. But the dominant will now begin to wane and the new will grow. Eventually, it too will become the overbearing present and it too will give birth to the next newness. In this way, life’s ceaseless dynamic of change offers hope and caution simultaneously. Everything changes. Good times don’t last forever. And neither do bad ones. Whatever is happening now, good or bad, is giving birth to the next state, which will be its opposite. Does knowledge of this dance help us persevere? (p. 49)

This morning’s gospel from Mark (10:46-52) offers two great lessons for us. It is about Bartimaeus, the blind beggar who kept calling out for mercy to Jesus as he was passing on the road from Jericho. People kept trying to quiet him but he kept shouting until he got the attention he was seeking. First lesson: perseverance. When Jesus heard and had him brought forward, the question was clear: What do you want me to do for you? The answer was just as clear: Master, I want to see. Second lesson: Be sure of what you really want from God and speak it unequivocally.

We all have some blind spots and a great practice is to recognize them and then work to overcome them. But we can’t do that alone. Even when we know what clouds our sight or our intentions for good, we sometimes fail to live up to our best selves. So today my plan is to listen to that question of Jesus and dig deep into the mirror of my inner prompting for the courage to answer, like Bartimaeus: Master, I want to see!

Today’s responsorial psalm is a selection of verses from Psalm 119, starting with verse 66. I knew that this psalm was the longest by far but was reminded of how complex it is by the footnote in my Bible which names it “an alphabetic psalm of didactic nature” and elaborates: “In the form of prayer it inculcates the excellence of keeping the divinely revealed law…there is a constant repetition of the main theme with numerous disconnected variations of it. The external form is based on an elaborately constructed scheme. The psalmist chose eight synonyms – law, statutes, commands, ordinances, decrees, precepts, words and promise – and in his strophes of eight verses apiece planned perhaps to use a different synonym in each verse. In the present form of the text, this plan is not perfectly carried out…but the psalm is the longest by far and each of the eight verses in the first strophe begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, each verse of the second strophe with the second letter and so on for all 22 letters of the alphabet. Hence, there are 176 verses in the psalm.” Below are a few of the verses from today (in alternate translation) that speak to the beauty of God’s law and the psalmist’s desire to know and follow.

So good are you, you bring forth good; instruct me in the pattern of this deeper wisdom…I’ve slowly come to know your perfect word, your ways, even in my deepest trials, for there your love is always present to console; this is your promise made. Your love shall come and I shall live according to its law, my soul’s delight…So I will not forget your precepts, Lord; by them you hold me up in life. All that I am is yours…I seek to be the image of your word.

At a funeral this week and again in the gospel verse this morning, I read Paul’s declaration to the Philippians that I consider all things as loss (some translations say “rubbish”) that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (PHIL 3:8-9) While life in Christ is certainly my goal, I can’t say that everything else – and everyone – is that easy to discount. As I was pondering this, my eye fell on David Keller’s book, Oasis of Wisdom, about the world and words of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in the early days of Christianity. I opened the book at random (if such a thing exists) to page 72 where the heading read “Daily Awareness of One’s Death”. Instead of closing the book in distress I read the words of Abba Antony and Keller’s commentary that followed and found there a way to live into Paul’s words.

Abba Antony said: Therefore, my children, let us hold to the discipline and not be careless. For we have the Lord for our co-worker in this, as it is written. God works for good with everyone who chooses the good. And in order that we not become negligent, it is good to carefully consider the Apostle’s statement: I die daily.

David Keller comments: Abba Antony taught that a monk must live in such a way that the presence of God is always before him and, likewise, that God’s presence should become a reality in his manner of life. This manner of life is made possible by an open heart, an inner place that is always watchful and receptive to the presence of God.

What follows from all this for me is the necessity of always remaining conscious of the reality that all things are not to be despised but rather seen through the lens of God’s presence. In that way they become vehicles for deepening our life in God. Oh yes, and our willingness to let go of anything that impedes that deepening or clouds that lens is essential; thus, “dying every day” becomes a pattern for life. May it be so!

Sometimes life depends a lot on attitude. Often when “bad things” happen people are heard to say, “It’s God’s will.” Rarely have I heard anyone proclaim that it is God’s will when they are steeped in unbounded joy. To be fair, we tend to use other ways to express God’s presence in our lives at those times, saying things like “God has been good to me.” I wonder, though, if it would make a difference, even slightly, if we sang with the psalmist, “To do your will, O my God, is my delight and your law is in my heart!” (Ps. 40) And what if we woke up every morning with today’s psalm refrain on our lips: “Here I am Lord; I come to do your will.” For me, that line has a feeling of happy urgency, as if I am running toward God because I can’t wait to serve whatever purpose it is God is asking because it gives me such joy. I might even make a sign for the inside of my bedroom door with that line printed on it so it accompanies me each morning to the coffee pot. Can’t hurt – might help!